US Afghan envoy to land in Delhi

President George Bush will be sending his special assistant to South-West Asia and Middle East and envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, to New Delhi on January 16-17. Interestingly, formal antagonists Iran and the US, besides India and Russia, are said to have coordinated their own strategies on backing the supremacy of the Northern Alliance faction in the interim Afghan administration.

Pakistan sent an ISI representative to the Bonn talks in November, causing many of the other participants to raise their eyebrows at Islamabad’s enduring audacity.

Russian hand

With the world seeking to mediate between India and Pakistan over the current crisis, should Russia be much different? For those who say yes, invoking the very special relationship between New Delhi and Moscow, the reality seems to be quite different. Over the weekend, newspaper reports from Moscow quoted the Russian government’s keenness to send a ‘‘special envoy’’ to sort out the latest Indo-Pak tangle. New Delhi has been looking askance at all these Russian moves, wondering what and why the Kremlin really seems to be doing. Seems that with the Taliban having effectively been eliminated on the ground, Moscow wants to maintain a more than civil relationship with Islamabad, arguing that the shortest routes through Central Asia and Afghanistan lead to Pakistan and the warm waters of the Arabian Sea.

Russia’s statement on the December 13 attack was so terribly ‘balanced’’ it provoked Prime Minister Vajpayee to call Russian President Vladimir Putin and register New Delhi’s dismay. India did not expect this from an old friend, said the PM. Which, in turn, led to Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov finally calling External Affairs minister Jaswant Singh and assuring him of Moscow’s support bilaterally as well as in the international fight against terrorism.

View from the South

Make love, not war, goes the graffito on the side of a truck in deep Kerala, and it really sums up the very bored view of the average South Indian about the Indo-Pakistani antics up North. But if anything, the tension throws up other, more pressing issues in the South. A number of Malayali Muslims who were lured into Pakistan by the promise of jobs after Independence — but returned home when they found that wasn’t true — now wonder whether or when the Indian state will grant them citizenship. Others bemoan the loss of a flourishing trade in betel. But mostly, people want to know when New Delhi is going to focus on issues like trade and development and better relations with neighbours like Sri Lanka and Gulf nations where, according to conservative estimates, about 20 lakh Malayalis work for a living.

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